“Father,” said Meoraq at last, and knew that he was heard. He looked up into the sky, not to see Sheul’s face among the rolling clouds but to show Him his own, naked and troubled, here on Gann. “Father, I cry out to You from the darkness. Lift up Your lamp and show me how to find them. Let me give them their last prayers and release them to Your judgment.”

Sheul listened, but did not speak.

“I do not ask for myself,” Meoraq admitted. “I should. They are Your children also and deserve the care all children of Sheul may expect in passing from this mortal life. I should love them, as the Word tells me to do, and seek them for myself, but I don’t. I can’t. Were it not for my woman’s pain, I know I would not be calling to You now. Forgive Your son his failings,” he said, touching his palm to Gann and taking away small daubs of mud to rub over his mortal heart. “But do not punish his wife because of them. I beseech You, Father, set me on their last path and let me find where they lie so I can give them true death.”

Sheul’s hand was heavy upon his shoulder, but His great voice still remained silent and Meoraq knew why. Finding where Scott and his humans had washed up would mean turning around. It would mean five days of walking back to the canal and who knew how many days more to search. The bodies might be spans and spans away; if he were lucky, the canal might have fallen in at some point, allowing the bodies to be vomited out on the street where they were visible, but if not, they had surely finished up in some ancient cistern. Or several cisterns, spans apart. Either way, a search could easily eat up the rest of the season, with no guarantee of ever finding even one body. And any body he did find…after so many days soaking in the stormways, he would never know which of them it had been.

Meoraq knew very little about women and even less about humans, but as much as he wished to make some grand romantic gesture to his grieving wife, the reality was that the other humans were gone. The clay of their flesh would crumble; the spark that had once warmed it, lost forever. This was truth, and as Master Tsazr had once said, truth does not care if it comforts you.

The fire was failing already. He would have to go find real fuel or let it die. The tea was not very dark yet, but drinkable and hot. Lost in his own brooding thoughts, torn between the realities of this camp and the intangibilities that lay beyond it, Meoraq reached into his pack and felt about for his cup.

His fingers touched something cup-like wrapped in his spare breeches, but with an odd protrusion he couldn’t quite—

Oh. Oh no.

But yes, and soon he was holding them—one garish human cup in each hand—and asking himself how by Gann’s wicked whim he had managed to forget the stupid things so completely? Damn him, all this time, Amber had thought them lost forever. All this time, he’d made her come to him in her embarrassed way to beg for his cup when he was done with it, and there were days when he had made damned sure she knew she was inconveniencing him. All this time, but like the humans themselves, as soon as they were out of sight, he’d simply never given them another thought.

“Great Sheul, take Your hand from my shoulder,” he groaned, dipping out some tea, “and send it against my stupid snout. Wake up, Soft-Skin. Come, wife. Wake and hear me.”

She muttered thickly and curled closer around herself, rolling away from him when he nudged the cup against her shoulder. “No. We’re fighting. That means I don’t have to deal with you if I don’t want to. Leave me alone.”

Sheul’s hand stayed gentle where it rested on him. Meoraq simply leaned further over and set the cup down in front of her.

She made him wait a very long time before she opened her eyes, but he knew when she’d done it by the stiffening of her turned back. After several shaking breaths, she pushed herself up and looked at him.

There were many things he wanted to say, and some he did not want to say but knew he had to, but when her green eyes came to him, it all fell away.

“We are done walking for the day,” he told her.

She picked up the cup and held it loosely between her hands, staring at the tea.

“Tomorrow, we will walk again, but we stop when I give that command and you will not defy me.”

She stirred at the tea with her finger, but did not drink.

“All things are possible with Sheul, but I cannot promise you that we will ever find them.”

Her eyes closed. “I know.”

“I will not allow you to kill yourself searching.”

“Meoraq—”

“No,” he said forcefully. “It is not your life to give. It is mine.”

She said nothing. A single tear welled beneath the tightly-shut lid of her left eye, but it never grew fat enough to fall.

He hoped the matter was settled now because he really did not know what else to say. He took up her second human cup, filled it, and arranged himself beside her. After a moment, determined to prove that he was not a scaly son of a bitch, or at least, not always, he put his arm around her.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“I know. As soon as I have the tent together, I want you inside it. From now on, that is where you sleep.” He put the hammer to that with an authoritative grunt and drank some tea. It was cold and overwatered. He drank it anyway.

“Then what?”

“Eh?”

“What happens next?”

“We travel on to Xi’Matezh,” he said, surprised that she felt this had somehow changed.

“No, I meant tonight.”

“Tonight?” His mind, wonderfully blank, suddenly lit with Sheul’s own exasperated slap of illumination. He uttered a little laugh, surprised as much by her coyness as by this unexpected drift in the conversation. “You don’t have to wait up for me, Soft-Skin. If the fires come, I’ll wake you.”

Her brows drew together. Her eyes flicked in a bewildered way toward the coals where his tea had warmed.

“Sheul’s fires,” he amplified.

Her confusion did not appear to clear. A troubling thought occurred to him. “How much do you know about sex?”

She snorted. “I know God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“So you…don’t know anything.” He thought about that, a little stymied by the enormity of the task now before him, and decided that, just like trying to teach something new to his brother Salkith, it would be best to start with gentle compliments. He reached out to pat her thigh. “You did very well during first conquest.”

Her furry brows rose in peaks and then crashed thunderously down. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

It didn’t always work with Salkith either.

“I enjoyed your struggles. I would permit you to fight again, if you like.”

“Oh believe me, lizardman, I will.”

He smiled. “It pleases me that you want to be my well-mannered woman,” he said, peeling back the neck of her shirt. Ignoring her playful slaps, he licked at the mark he’d left in her soft skin. “But I would rather have the insufferable she-warrior I was given. So if you want me, put your hands on me and tell me so.”

“What if I don’t want you?”

“Ah, my wife, is that what’s bothering you?” He licked her again, slowly this time, tasting the strange, rich bitters of her blood, and felt it when she shivered. “We have only been married two days. Surely that is too early for you to start worrying that I might set you aside, especially since you have burned for me so readily thus far.”

“It wasn’t like that!” she said, fetchingly embarrassed, as women often were, by this public acknowledgement of her pleasure. “I was lonely and…and scared! That’s all!”

He could guess how much it cost his proud woman to make such an admission. He tipped his head to run the side of his snout gently along the curve of her shoulder, following it up to her slender neck in spite of her efforts to shrug him off. “And you needed me.”

She stiffened.